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Sunday, June 26, 2011

fabric paints review

So far, for my painting on fabric projects I've used only three different kind of paint

* Pebeo Seta Color for almost all of my painted projects
* Tulip for the flamingo beach tote
* Deka Permanent for my curtain and towels
(in the craft store where I've been in Italy I couldn't find the Pebeo one, but I know it's been sold in Europe, since it's a French brand)

I've got several requests on which kind of paint I've used,

so here's my "not expert opinion".

Pebeo Seta Color:
I'm in love with all their colors, plus they have metallics, pearl, and a glitter finish!
I've used this brand on different t-shirts, some pure cotton, some cotton & lycra (this, this, this), cotton thicker knit (for the Missoni necklace), and linen (the powder bathroom towels).
The paint can be diluted with water if you want a more transparent and watercolor kind of effect (I used it for the Antonio Marras shirt and the 5 minutes t-shirt refashion) and still hold onto the fabric well and doesn't get too runny.
Since I like painting on fabric, I bought the bigger containers on the primary colors, plus black and white, and when I want a specific color I make my own mix until I'm happy with the result (this was a mixture of blue, yellow and white).
The white is thicker than the other colors.
After the project is done, let it dry for 24 hours and press on reverse for 5 minutes.
Colors can be machine wash, and I put the items in the dryer in a warm cycle, in this way the paint loose its stiffness and the garment turns out nice and soft.

Deka Permanent:
I found that Pebeo Seta color and Deka have the same behavior, nice thick paint that you can dilute with water if you want to have a less coverage on your fabric, the paint needs to be fixed with a hot iron after 24 hours and you can machine wash it.
I painted with Deka on 100% cotton fabric (for the towels's border) and on 50% cotton and 50% polyester for the curtain, with the exact same result in terms of brightness and stability.
Both the curtain and the towels have been washed and dried and I'm 100% satisfied with the result.

Tulip:
When I was in the making of the flamingo beach tote, I didn't want to mix and match the colors to create the hot pink, since the surface to cover was quite big and if I would run out of paint and in need to make another batch I wouldn't be able to match it right, so I head out to Michael's to buy a bottle of hot pink.
I discovered that they don't carry anymore the Pebeo brand, so I bought this Tulip in neon pink.
oh, boy...
It's very watery and even if you stay right into the lines it tends to bleed a little.
I'm happy I tried it on this project and not in something where the smudges would drove me insane.

Also, when I got to the end of the first strap, the paint was finished, Normally a bottle of this size of the Pebeo brand would have given me plenty of extra mileage.

So, I had to run out (literally) to Michael's and get another one... the last bottle in this color.

Came back home and the fabric was almost dry, but very disappointing, once dried it turned so much lighter.

The neon pink turned in a sort of just a tad darker than a baby pink.

Yes, some swearing all of the sudden happened... such is life.

I finished the first coat... and decided to see what would have been the result with a second coat.

So I had to paint the whole thing twice.
In fact, with the second bottle, I could do the whole bag, but I had to leave out the inner side of the straps because I ran out of paint again (and this was the last bottle in the store...)

The Tulip paint needs to dry for three days (W.T.Heck???) and doesn't need any press to be fixed.
But when I rinsed the tote to get the water soluble markers off... there was A LOT of pink stuff in my tub. NOT GOOD.